Published March 10, 2020
I am the former owner of a theater whose comedy career was ended in 2017. I was falsely accused by a stalker who was encouraged and used by a business competitor.
Page 1 — An account of a consensual relationship
Background
Mettlesome Comedy owner Ashley Melzer conspired with other former DSI employees and Grace Carnes, a former friend willing to share an untrue allegation of sexual assault. As a new business rival, Ashley Melzer weaponized an accusation she knew to be false made by someone she knew to be a stalker, leveraging a cultural moment, mental illness, fear, disgruntled performers, credulous local media, and just enough truth to destroy me and dismantle DSI.
The initial smear campaign began in Summer 2016 and was nurtured semi-secretly over the course of a year fueled by a story which was demonstrably false. The public campaign was scheduled to land like a bomb the day after the last group of performers left DSI to join Melzer's new company.
Comments on Facebook quickly turned into a collective defamation of character to end Zach Ward and drive justice for Grace Carnes. When DSI Comedy was forced to close, under the unbelievable pressure of what happened, Mettlesome Comedy was in position and ready to profit off the chaos.
I was canceled. A stalker became a hero. And Ashley Melzer saved comedy.
I cannot lie: It is hard to tell this story. The details feel deeply personal, uncomfortable and embarrassing, but I want to share the story of what happened as objectively as I can, backed up by the words and actions of the people involved. As much as possible, I have tried to let their own words — in the form of personal correspondence and public social media posts — speak for them. I want you to draw the conclusion you feel fits verifiable facts.
As much as possible, I have tried to mask the identities of people who communicated with me but who did not publicly comment on the story. Those who conspired to ruin me made no such consideration, and their texts, tweets and public comments are full of anonymous complaints and innuendo.
Grace Carnes
Since Grace Carnes' story anchored the media coverage and public conversation about my life’s work and my character, I want to address her accusation first. I don't know how Grace Carnes first came into the DSI orbit. I know that like thousands of other people over the course of DSI's 17 years in business, she had taken a class — at least one class in sketch comedy — before she and I had any meaningful interactions.
May 17, 2014
Carnes’ public account stated that I reached out to her in late June 2014. This was not true. Grace Carnes initiated contact with me. She found and friended me on Facebook after she had joined a group of DSI performers after a show for drinks at a bar in Chapel Hill. I responded, but did not go further.
June 3, 2014
Carnes messaged me again two weeks later to initiate a personal online conversation about her own experience with divorce, on the anniversary of my separation. This was a continuation of our personal bar conversation weeks earlier.
CARNES WAS NOT MY STUDENT
June 10, 2014
Grace Carnes eventually talked to me about the classes she had taken at the theater.
Carnes told me explicitly that she was “not an aspiring comedian or even an aspiring DSI member” and that she would “never be vying for stage time.” She said her interest, as it was for many who had taken DSI classes, was in having fun and meeting new people.
This was almost a month before we slept together.
I accepted this at face value and interpreted her words to mean that, if we were to connect and pursue anything, it would be as two independent adults, not in the context of any professional or creative involvement in the theater on her part.
We exchanged messages on Facebook for a couple weeks. We were actively trying to find time. We were both single parents and scheduling was difficult.
The comments she made in messages appeared to be pretty clearly pointing toward the pursuit of a personal relationship of some kind:
On June 21, in a Facebook private message, Carnes says, “We'll find a place to hideaway eventually.” She references “romantic moments” and comments made by other performers about erections and sleeping together.
On June 26, Carnes makes a suggestive joke about her or me “coming” first. We have yet to make plans to see each other, at this point. Nothing physical had happened, but the tone of the messages from Carnes had become increasingly sexual.
On June 30, while writing back and forth about our parenting schedules, Carnes messaged me “hopefully I’ll get to see your face Fri night!” in reference to the following Friday night, July 4, 2014.
And on July 4, Carnes confirmed she would be at DSI after the fireworks on July 4th. I ask if I should steal her away for a drink. Carnes replies, “I sure hope so.”
This seemed, to me, like pretty unambiguous garden-variety flirting.
None of these interactions would matter if what Carnes claimed happened had happened. That she and I engaged in unremarkable sexual flirting via private messages would not justify the assault she describes. Let me be clear: I believe in affirmative consent. I had it each time she and I had sexual interactions.
Content notice: Any account of a private sexual encounter can be hard to read. I am not happy to share this story, but the details here are essential to understanding what happened, what didn't happen, and how the difference between the two makes all the difference in the world. The mechanics and particulars are relevant in that Carnes' portrayal leverages untruths about what happened, how it happened, and where it happened to paint a very different story from the truth.
The Story of July 4, 2014
On the night of Independence Day, I returned to DSI Comedy on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill after hosting a community event at UNC's Kenan Stadium.
I believed that Carnes and I had made plans to, in her own words, “find a place to hideaway” later that night, as she herself had said explicitly in a message on June 21. The night of Independence Day, Carnes messaged me from the fireworks at 9:28 after DSI's logo had flashed on the jumbotron in the stadium.
I interpreted this as continued flirtation.
When I saw Carnes later at the theater, she appeared enthusiastic about seeing me and clear about her intentions to not leave with everyone else. She declined to leave with friends. She waited at the end of the bar while staff closed up and, eventually, it was just the two of us. Together we closed the front doors and went upstairs, together.
We walked to the middle of the room, together.
It was not dark. It was never dark upstairs. On Franklin Street, there was a street light on the sidewalk directly outside the two upstairs front facing windows. Light was also shining in from the parking lot, through the two rear facing windows.
Carnes put down her bag and we immediately started kissing while standing together in the middle of the upstairs room, the theater’s business office.
I started to pull up her dress and she was, as she describes in her account, not wearing underwear. I was surprised, but not upset when I found out for myself.
What a woman wears, however, does not convey consent.
I asked Carnes deliberately and directly “So, this is happening?” and she replied confidently, with what felt like a provocative tone “What do you think’s happening?”
Based on these words, her tone, her body language, our communication to that point, and the fact that we had been kissing after leaving the group to spend time alone, I had no reason to doubt that Grace Carnes intended to have sex with me that night.
I pulled up her dress, a sheath dress that was not easy to maneuver, while she attempted to undo my belt, also not easy. It felt like we were both equally determined.
Never once did Carnes say no or ask to stop.
But more than that, there was not a single moment of pause or indication of any kind that what was happening was unwelcome or anything other than what we had planned to do that night.
There was also not and never has been a ping pong table at DSI, an incredibly specific detail from Carnes’ graphic account of her experience that night.
When we left the theater together, Carnes went to meet people at the bar and I went home.
I reached out with the message “That happened” at 12:41am, a flirtatious callback to the provocative exchange right before we started. Carnes' mentions this message in her account, but leaves out what happened before — the first interchange in which I asked "is this happening?" as a request for consent — and what happened afterward.
Carnes replied positively the morning after, sending three flirtatious hashtags, including #yesand.
WITHOUT QUESTION
I do not think a reasonable observer could read her message of July 6, 2014 at 7:45am as anything other than a clear statement Carnes welcomed the consensual encounter we had on July 4th, after weeks of coordinating schedules and intentional flirtation, both online and in person.
So, to recap, Grace Carnes pursued me online, we flirted for over a month, her messages were sexually charged, we made plans, and we had sex. In her interactions with me, documented here, Carnes was never remotely hesitant about what happened — before, during or immediately after we had sex.
That could be the whole story.
What’s here doesn’t line up with her public account. Right?
But there’s more —
On July 8, Carnes messages that she grabbed a phone number from my Facebook profile and that she has texted me “gratuitous topless photos”
On July 9, while coordinating time to see each other again, Carnes implies that I could meet her in Durham for lunchtime sex (“sneak out for a nooner”)
Grace Carnes and I had a short-lived consensual relationship.
Grace Carnes and I planned to have sex, we made time in our schedules as single parents to have sex and we did so on three separate occasions in an agreed upon location, one that made sense at the time for single parents with complicated lives.
Each time we had sex, I received clear consent from a partner whom I believed to be genuinely interested, consent from someone who actively pursued me online and, whenever we saw each other in person, someone who also regularly made the first move.
And for a year after, she and I were friends. Friends.
I wish that in order to clear my name, I didn't have to call Carnes to account. She's a single parent, like me. From our conversations, I know some details about her life and the troubles she's faced. I feel true compassion for her.
I believe Grace Carnes may have been manipulated, egged on by people who sought to destroy me, welcomed in, lionized and given purpose by Ashley Melzer, Paula Pazderka, and others who wished to take down DSI.
But that doesn't change the fact that her story about our first physical encounter was demonstrably untrue.
I was paralyzed.
I was destroyed by a public takedown that needed zero proof and I became a morally acceptable target of unending righteous indignation. I was stripped of my livelihood immediately and outcast in my hometown. I’ve faced consequence after impossible consequence for something that did not happen.
I still struggle to understand why anyone would do what these people have done to another human being.
But here we are. Trolling and online harassment happen everyday. I want — I need — to share what happened to me, so I can stop replaying this awful series of events over and over.
I want to be able to tell my son that his Dad focused on what was most important in that moment.
I want him to know that I made sure that he was taken care of first, no matter the cost, but that eventually I got back up. I made sure that I was healthy and we were stable, and then I got back up.
I’ll never get back what was lost, because you can’t unburn the house down, but that’s not why I need to share this story.
I want my son to know that the truth matters.
The very best version of this story, that I had pre-planned and consensual sex at my place of work with a person who decided to publicly post graphic details of that encounter, still fills me with overwhelming shame as a private person who became a public figure, entertainer and business owner in a small town.
The story Carnes shared, and the way that people on the internet jumped to conclusions based on her story, conclusions that shredded my character and reputation, was paralyzing — Carnes became a lightning rod for mob outrage and a moral panic that irreparably damaged my entire life and work that I spent decades building.
I have had a hard time processing the way I’ve been described by Carnes and people on the internet whom I’ve never met: I’ve been called a misogynist, a psychopath, a sociopath, and a rapist. I have never felt more alone, more trapped in unreality.
Death threats were made. In the comments of Facebook threads, people offered to drive to North Carolina and kill me. The Summer after DSI closed, I felt like a ghost. I felt worthless and like I might never find the space to breathe again.
I considered ending my own life everyday for almost three months. I walked myself back on more occasions than I would like to admit, because self-hatred can be hard to fight when you’re declared guilty of sexual assault by the internet.
I was blacklisted from the world of comedy and became a pariah in my hometown overnight. It took more than 2 years to build up the courage to even start to address what happened.
There are days I wake up terrified that my son and what’s left of my life will be taken away without cause and people will just laugh, or worse, that good people will be scared, and sit back and watch from the sidelines, again.
I’ve created routines to manage the stress and anxiety, but the fire online that started with a false story has yet to stop.
There have been campaigns to get me fired from hourly retail jobs, online threats and cyber harassment, and efforts that have prevented me from finding reliable childcare.
I want to find peace, to heal from what happened and move on. I would like to continue supporting the arts and the community in my hometown. I would like the opportunity to help people again.
I would really like the chance to be happy, or even to just be.
I am not able to do any of that with the story that was manufactured — a story that's still out there.
This was only the first page.
Read the rest.
If you are struggling with your mental health and suicidal thoughts, please pick up the phone and dial 988 — Trained crisis counselors are available 24/7/365. If you’re outside of the US, please click here for a list of international hotlines.